By Ana HurtadoRepublic of Palestine - HavanaIn the days following the kidnapping and the grave human rights violations committed against the Venezuelan people on January 3, within the framework of actions promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump against President Nicolás Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores—acts denounced by various sectors of the international community—Washington once again placed Cuba at the center of its political and rhetorical offensive.
Through messages published on his platform Truth Social, Trump issued new threats against the island, reaffirming the policy of economic pressure implemented during his administration. In those statements, the U.S. president insisted on preventing any form of financial or energy support to Cuba, reviving a confrontational rhetoric that has historically defined relations between the two countries—portraying Cuba as a nation of peace, and Trump’s United States as a nation shaped by war.
These declarations came at a time when key figures within the U.S. political apparatus, including Senator Marco Rubio, renewed their calls for tightening the economic siege. Rubio publicly defended the blockade as a tool of political pressure, despite its direct impact on the civilian population and despite repeated international condemnations that describe it as a violation of international law.
The response from Cuban authorities was immediate. President Miguel Díaz-Canel categorically rejected Trump’s threats and denounced the interventionist nature of U.S. policy toward the island. In his statements, he emphasized that Cuba does not accept impositions or external tutelage, and recalled that the Cuban people have withstood more than six decades of an unprecedented economic, financial, and commercial blockade without renouncing their sovereignty or their political project.
Along the same lines, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced the threats and sanctions promoted by the Trump administration as violations of the fundamental principles of international law. Rodríguez recalled that U.S. hostility toward Cuba is not circumstantial, but rather a constant since 1959, regardless of the political orientation of successive governments in Washington, and that none of these policies has achieved its declared objective of subduing the country.
This new episode fits within a well-documented historical pattern. Contemporary Latin American history is marked by multiple attempts by the United States to interfere in the internal affairs of the region. From the 1954 coup in Guatemala, to the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government in Chile in 1973, to support for military dictatorships in the Southern Cone and interventions in Central America during the 1980s and 1990s, Washington has systematically relied on political, economic, and military pressure to safeguard its strategic interests. These processes left deep social, political, and human consequences in the affected countries and form part of the regional context in which policy toward Cuba is situated.
Within this record, the island occupies a singular place.
Unlike other countries in the region, Cuba not only resisted external pressure but also consolidated a political project of its own in open confrontation with imperial power. The Bay of Pigs invasion, assassination attempts, the economic blockade, and campaigns of diplomatic isolation constitute direct precedents of the current scenario. None of these strategies succeeded in ending the revolutionary process or breaking the will of resistance of the Cuban people.
The reactivation of confrontational discourse by Trump also responds to internal dynamics within the United States. In a context in which the U.S. economy is structurally linked to the arms industry and the military-industrial complex, the threat of external conflict has historically been used as a political and economic resource. War—or the possibility of war—has functioned as a mechanism of internal cohesion and as a means to sustain economic interests tied to the military sector.
Cuba, despite not representing a conventional military threat nor possessing key strategic resources, fulfills a symbolic function within this logic. Attacking Cuba allows for the reactivation of an ideological narrative, the mobilization of certain political sectors, and the reaffirmation of an imperial vision that resists acknowledging limits. This is not merely a circumstantial dispute, but an unresolved historical conflict.
From Havana, the position has been clear and consistent. Cuba does not seek confrontation, but neither does it accept submission. The doctrine of the “war of the entire people,” developed over decades, is based on the conviction that the defense of sovereignty does not depend solely on technological or economic power, but on political consciousness, social organization, and collective will. Historical experience demonstrates that bombings can destroy infrastructure, but they cannot annul the determination of a people resolved to defend their independence.
More than six decades after the triumph of the Revolution, Cuba continues to represent a limit to imperial policy in Latin America. Not because it is invulnerable, but because it has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not bow to threats or external pressure. That persistence explains why the island continues to occupy a central place in the discourse of those who, from Washington, have yet to accept its sovereignty.
Ana Hurtado: spanish writer and journalist living in Cuba
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